


aftermath

by greenery



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Canon Compliant, Cuddling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 08:46:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18634771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenery/pseuds/greenery
Summary: After the ill-fated carnivale, John and Henry seek comfort in each other's company.





	aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [this](https://littledozerdraws.tumblr.com/post/178389357547) sweet sweet drawing by littledozerdraws on tumblr

The light is low in the cramped stewards’ cabin, the oil lamp’s flickering flame can provide no more than the illusion of warmth. It is cold, but then again it always is, and with the two men breathing and moving about the tiny room it is surely warmer than in the more spacious Captain’s cabins, or, God beware, out in the fo’c’sle.

John shakes the match he used to light the lamp until the flame is gone and watches silently as Harry flings the frilled and golden-embroidered frock coat into the furthest corner of the room.

“Reeks of soot,” he simply states and fails to hide the tremble in his voice.

“As do we all,” says John. Soot and snow and death.

Their screams are still ringing in his ears, and he knows that Harry hears them too, that he too can still feel the soft bodies of the trampled men under his feet. _What does it matter_ , John thinks, _fewer mouths to feed, and in a few months’ time we’ll all be dead anyway._ He pushes the unsought thoughts aside and tries to focus on Harry, who is still staring at the brownish-golden heap of fabric in the corner.

“I envy them, you know,” Harry says quietly, as if he doesn’t want anyone to hear the words coming from his mouth. “I don’t want to, but I do.”

“Who?” John asks, although he knows the answer.

Harry finally looks at him, watery eyes, his pupils large in the half darkness, his shoulders slouched and slightly turned away from John.

“The men who died. Their miserable lives are over and done with. And we’re still here-”

“Harry.”

“Waiting for death. That’s what we’re doing, isn’t it? Sure, we might leave the ships for good in a few days or weeks, but what for?”

“Harry, I-”

“I’d rather die here, where it’s dry and comfortable, than out there on the ice.” He pauses for a second. “Mauled by this … thing.”

It takes John two steps to cross the cabin and to close the distance between them. He grabs Harry firmly by the frail shoulders. “We have seen horrible, horrible things tonight. And we will see more of them. But right now we are tired, Harry, and we need to rest.”

“Don’t say things will look better in the morning.”

“I won’t.”

Harry looks around, his gaze lingering on John’s narrow bed.

“Can I stay here?” he asks, hesitantly, and how could John say No when this is all he’d wished for ever since Harry had volunteered to berth on _Erebus_.

“I insist,” he says, and Harry manages a weak smile as he unbuttons his waistcoat and hangs it over the only chair. “The soot,” he shrugs, takes off his careworn boots as well and sits down on the edge of the bunk.

A sigh escapes his lips as he wiggles his toes. “I never thought I’d miss the feeling of London cobblestone under my feet. I’d give everything for that now.”

“Everything?” John can’t help but grin at the almost childlike sight of Harry.

“Everything. My pay, my house. God, I’d gladly be homeless in London, at least that implies the concept of a home still exists.”

“I wouldn’t allow that. You could stay with me again,” John says and makes sure the cabin’s sliding door is properly closed, although he is convinced every man on the ship has his own demons to battle tonight, and in general. They would hardly care about the ongoings in the quiet steward’s cabin.

“So, have you started with Xenophon yet?” he asks, if only for the sake of breaking the silence.

“No.” Harry closes his eyes and massages his temples. “I can’t seem to focus on anything for longer than a few minutes these days.”

John nods and sits down on the chair opposite of Harry, who opens his eyes again when he feels the weight of John’s hand on his right knee.

“But I have been keeping a diary, like you said.” He makes a vague gesture toward his waistcoat on the back of the chair. John produces a leather-bound wallet from its inside pocket. The tattered binding feels rough in his hands, and if he didn’t know any better, he would have thought it a relic from a lost expedition, recovered hundreds of years later. It must have come in direct contact with seawater more than once, back in ‘45, when the ships were still afloat and Harry was still Captain of the Foretop on _Terror_ in more than just theory.

As he flicks through the yellowed pages, he feels a certain pride. Had it not been for his own patience and never-ending encouragement, not to forget Harry’s inexhaustible thirst for knowledge of course, he probably wouldn’t look at the well-known tall and sweeping letters right now. Still, he cannot deny that he has some difficulty decoding most of the words, and even when he does, they make no sense to him.

“The words are there,” Harry mutters, “I can see them before my eyes. But I can’t … grasp them. They don’t allow me to pin them down.”

John nods again, slowly, not sure what to say, but the simple movement is enough reassurance for Harry.

“Sometimes when I look through it, I don’t even recall what I meant by those words. I don’t remember writing them. There is no meaning behind them. The words are leaving us, and I wonder what will be left once they’re gone.”

His voice becomes a hoarse whisper, barely audible over the sound of heavy boots echoing in the corridor. “What will become of us, John? Without words?”

John swallows and lowers his head to avoid Harry’s gaze and to take a more thorough look at the diary. From his humble studious beginnings on board of the _Beagle_ on, Harry had always been a very phonetical speller. This had always astounded and bemused John a little, because even as the young men grew to become a passionate reader, his spelling barely improved, and John wondered if this could stem from becoming literate so late in his life.

The smudged sentences on the pages barely deserve that name, most of them are no more than fragments, really. Seemingly random, confused thoughts, jotted down hastily in that curious backward writing.

 _Brekfest to be short rations_ , John reads, his lips barely moving, and, on the same page, _Whose is this coffee?_

The following page is dominated by a sort of roundel, encompassed by the words _I went wander money a night_. It looks almost playful, but John’s heart skips a beat when he deciphers a part of the paragraph next to the sphere.

_the grog shop that stood opporsite_

Although he would never admit it, the grog shop had been one of the reasons he rented the small London room he did. The street had been narrow and shabby, the area mainly populated by sailors on shore leave, waiting for the sea to call them again, drinking and whoring their days away.

No, it had not been a part of town one would proudly present to visiting relatives (not that John had any), but it had been home, and the consoling warmth of the grog shop opposite had been part of that. Many a lonely night John Bridgens had spent seated uncomfortably on a stool by the counter, and just as many times he’d brought Harry. They wouldn’t talk or drink much, wallowing in each other’s presence strangely seemed to be enough.

“Do you remember the innkeeper? The grog shop?” John’s voice is coarse with nostalgia.

“Old Tom?”

“Aye. Always busy cleaning the glasses, but God knows what he did with them. We certainly never drank from them.”

Harry snorts. “Right. You know what the best part about this shop was?”

“The grog?”

“When we’d just buy a bottle or two and then drank it all at home, in bed, reading.”

Harry’s face lights up at the memory and John smiles back at him, closing the diary and putting it aside. The bunk creaks as he joins Harry.

“It won’t ever be like that again, will it?”

John hesitates for a moment. “No,” he says finally, and Harry nods.

“We have no more grog. But we still have books.”

 _We still have us_ , John thinks. Their eyes meet and he knows that the same soppy thought has taken form somewhere in Harry’s confused mind.

John bends forward to take his boots off as well. He carefully kicks them away (serving as a steward for forty years does leave a mark, after all) and leans back against the wooden wall at the head of the bunk. He opens up his arms, but the inviting gesture is unneeded, as Harry has already come to rest on his chest.

“You know,” he mutters into John’s scratchy jumper, “I don’t regret it. Going to sea and all that. Not being home when Rose died. I don’t regret boarding _Terror_. But I do wish we could have served on the same ship one more time.”

 _A last time_. The unspoken words hang heavy in the stale air.

John dwells on this thought for a moment and slowly strokes Harry’s back. He is right, of course, but then again…

Lying here, in mutual silence, it almost feels like London again, was it not for the occasional gut-piercing crack reminding them of the endless fields of ice hassling their frail wooden ship. So they lie and listen to the ship’s noises, boots and shouts, the wind howling through every gap it can find, the bell chiming five. John absentmindedly plays with a strand of hair in Harry’s neck that looked too tempting not to touch and feels a ping of guilt. Both of them should be out there right now, helping to clear up the carnivale’s remains, recovering bodies.

But Harry is breathing so peacefully, eyes closed, and John Bridgens is no monster. He continues to fondle his back, takes in the familiar warmth, and once again tries to force last night’s emerging memories back to where they came from.

 _If we were to die right now, like this_ , he muses, _I wouldn’t object. What more could I wish for?_

He slides a warm hand beneath Harry’s jumper and the striped shirt. The fine net of scars is still there, how could it not be, he can see it before his eyes; Harry topless by the fireplace, his back faintly illuminated by the dying flames. He had been broader back then, John’s Diomedes, but the pale lines on his tanned back had always been a sensitive spot, and whenever John dared to ask about their origin, Harry would turn away and change the subject.

Eventually John had stopped asking, he knows what the mementos of an encounter with the cat o’ nine tails look like, has seem them often enough, and if Harry did not want to reveal and relive his past, so be it.

But would he ever get another chance to ask?

“Harry,” he murmurs and plants a kiss on the dark hair. No more than a sleepy sigh is the answer, but he goes on, quietly. “Your flogging. What was it for?”

Harry opens his eyes. “Why?”

“You know I’m a curious man by nature.”

Harry sighs again. “Drunkenness and mutinous conduct. The _Marquis Camden_ , back in 1830.”

“Mutinous conduct?”

“Aye. Got two dozen lashes.”

“I’ve never known a man I thought less prone to mutiny than you.”

“Oh how young I was,” Harry says and adds after a short pause, “And don’t forget the drunkenness.”

John chuckles and continues to trace the raised lines drawing through the soft skin. “You never cease to surprise me, Henry Peglar.”

Harry has closed his eyes again and shuffles closer, their legs intertwined, as the ship groans under another violent gust of wind.

“I’m scared, John. I’m so fucking scared,” he whispers into John’s chest, and he can’t help but feel a warmth he had thought lost, rising somewhere deep inside him at the sound of his name coming over Harry’s lips.

“I know,” he murmurs, takes Harry’s head in his hands and presses another kiss on his forehead before embracing him tightly, indulging in his smell, his weight, his presence.

“So,” John Bridgens says and reaches for the bookshelf above his bunk, “What do you feel like reading?”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading ♥  
> if you haven't already, you can learn more about the so-called peglar papers [here](https://visionsnorth.blogspot.com/search?q=Peglar) , the blog is a fantastic resource! :)


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